The Clockwork Atom Bomb - July 31, 2008, 4:09 pm
The Clockwork Atom Bomb By Dominic Green This is a must-read short story. Imagine the most gripping, horrifying, and pessimistic parts of Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle crammed into about ...

Superconductivity - July 29, 2008, 10:31 am
Superconductivity Certain materials, known as superconductors (hereafter SC's), when cooled below a certain critical temperature (Tc), exhibit extraordinary properties including resistance-les...

Iran's Photoshop Brigade - July 24, 2008, 2:28 pm
Iran's Photoshop Brigade Apparently Iran photoshopped photos of a missile launch and U.S. papers printed the photos without realizing they had been doctored. Full details here as well as hilar...

Journal 2 - July 6, 2008, 9:06 pm
July 4th weekend 2008 July 4th: 5K race in Rochester July 5th: Karate in Albany July 6th: National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown I had another full and enjoyable weekend. I celebrated I...

Journal 1 - June 30, 2008, 3:42 pm
June 30th, 2008 Last Friday Elissa and I had an adventure north of Rochester on the shore of Lake Ontario. "Adventure", of course, is a euphemism for getting really really lost. Eventually we made ...

Rectangular Rainbow Seeds - June 27, 2008, 10:02 pm
Rectangular Rainbow Seeds I didn't plan on making another useless, yet hopefully delightful javascript page so soon after Heat Flow, but I was in a mood. I was thinking about procedurally g...

23rd Annual Best of SF - June 20, 2008, 4:29 pm
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Third Annual Collection A friend of mine lent me the above title and I've been drilling through it the past week or two. I've been floored by ...

Heat Flow - June 6, 2008, 9:12 pm
Heat Flow If your first thought when you saw the above picture was "NASA photo" then you should tell me so. It will warm my heart. Actually, what I've got here is a simulation of heat flow...

Mouse relief - May 16, 2008, 9:24 pm
I had an idea to relieve my recent wrist pain from too much mouse use and it really helps especially for short people with tall desks or otherwise awkward work environments. If you have a laser mous...

ants - May 16, 2008, 9:08 pm
Ants are pretty bad ass. Recently they've been getting press due to swarm's of Crazy Raspberry Running Ants in Texas. I'd be embarrassed if I made up that name for them. I didn't. ...

Version 2.0 - May 15, 2008, 10:02 pm
My website has just undergone major changes. Nothing but the home page, smartamusement.com and the musings are at the same link as they were two hours ago. Everything is still "out there" somewhere....

Outer Space - May 14, 2008, 4:30 pm
I just read this NYtimes article, which isn't that interesting in and of itself, but it lead me to world wide telescope and google sky I haven't looked closely at these yet, but the googl...

The Dispossessed Vendetta Club - April 30, 2008, 3:01 pm
The Dispossessed Vendetta Club Right now I'm amped up on rebellious anarchy and dissatisfaction. Actually, I've been feeling this way for a few weeks now. First I read The Dispossessed...

We3 - April 14, 2008, 4:49 pm
We3 Homeward Bound meets Ghost in the Shell in the shocking graphic novel We3. By far the most accurate review of this work that I have read is this one: "[A] startling, disturbing and perhap...

Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse - April 10, 2008, 1:18 pm
Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse is a short story by Andy Duncan that is a Nebula award finalist, and for good reason. The story is fascinating, the characters are effici...

outsourcing our PCs - April 9, 2008, 1:45 pm
outsourcing our PCs So, if most of the internet is supported in large server farms "somewhere out there" where data is stored and scripts are run (and in case you didn't know, it is), then why d...

What Would Jesus Do - March 26, 2008, 8:50 am
What Would Jesus Do ...if he thought he was getting swindled by an auto mechanic? Jesus probably wouldn't own a car, but work with me here in this hypothetical situation. Maybe it's a sa...

Flight of the Conchords - March 25, 2008, 2:04 pm
Flight of the Conchords Apparently I have a long lost twin. Here are a few other attempts. The band is called Flight of the Conchords and they are hilarious, not to mention quite ta...

Dwarf Fortress - March 1, 2008, 8:29 pm
Dwarf Fortress Allow me to introduce you to a computer game called Dwarf Fortress. Imagine a combination of Sim City, The Sims, and Diablo II, and you will have some idea of the flavor of Dwarf Fortr...

Ceiling cat - February 29, 2008, 10:42 pm
Ceiling cat Knock knock. Has yu herd teh good wurd? If yu beleev in ceiling cat and axsept hiz son, Jeebus, intoo yur hart yu will spendz teh afterlifz hangin wit ceiling cat and you wil has all te...

Fruit preference - February 25, 2008, 5:54 pm
Fruit preference The latest xkcd comic (pictured above) is hilarious, but not half as hilarious as the outcry from readers. Apparently people are really passionate about their fruit. I read the f...

How does that work - February 16, 2008, 9:24 pm
How does that work Why do satellites fall out of the sky? Some people may wonder why satellites usually don't fall out of the sky (the moon is a satellite, ya know). The answer to that question...

A Weather Report - February 1, 2008, 1:00 pm
A Weather Report Let's talk about the weather. Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 An unseasonably warm day with some rain. I was worried about going on a run due to ice, but my concerns were unfoun...

Dont be dense or do - January 6, 2008, 4:11 pm
Dont be dense or do On average, a person living in the United States consumes more of the planets resources than anyone living anywhere else on the planet. Scripts for calculating one's impact i...

Google: Destroyer of Wonder - December 16, 2007, 9:30 pm
Google: Destroyer of Wonder Recently I chided myself for thinking, I wonder how to ... That isn't a solution-oriented thought, I told myself. I must train myself to think, I must remember to Goo...

So you want to be a writer - December 1, 2007, 4:12 pm
So you want to be a writer If you want to be a writer, the most important thing you can do is write. The second most important thing you can do is read. I'm told Stephen King gives this advice i...

Cutting steel and other manly materials part 2 - November 18, 2007, 5:48 pm
Cutting steel and other manly materials part 2 The warehouse at Klein Steel is relatively unimpressive to the untrained eye. Certainly, large pieces of steel, big cranes, and loud noises have some in...

Its a trap! (Star Wars nostalgia) - November 14, 2007, 9:21 pm
Its a trap! (Star Wars nostalgia) Cutting Steel part 2 will have to wait. I stumbled upon (sought out) Admiral Ackbar on facebook and came upon the Admiral Ackbar Fan Club. At first glance the group ...

Cutting steel and other manly materials part 1 - November 5, 2007, 7:31 am
Cutting steel and other manly materials part 1 I've more or less moved in to my new place in Rochester and today will only be my third day of work at Klein Steel. The first two days were a whirl...

Mortgage - October 23, 2007, 3:15 pm
Mortgage There is something that you enter after college called the "real world". Many of us put it off for as long as possible, but it finds most of us eventually. If the "real world" has any strict...

Creative Problem Solving in Video Games - October 11, 2007, 4:40 pm
Creative Problem Solving in Video Games Violent video games take a bad rap, perhaps for a good reason. Relatively few people would come out and say they are a good thing. Though it has been argued th...

Application of High School Algebra - October 2, 2007, 4:07 pm
Application of High School level Algebra 2 Problem set Consider the following situation. The cartoonist refers to the fact that sound or other types of waves emanating from one focal poin...

Zumbooruck - September 25, 2007, 1:50 pm
Zumbooruck Every once in awhile a coincidence occurs that makes you wonder if Zaphod Beeblebrox didn't just engage the Heart of Gold's improbability drive. On a lazy Sunday this past sum...

Randomness - September 12, 2007, 1:10 pm
Randomness I've always been curious about so called random number generators. Briefly my curiosity was transformed into virulent skepticism. I was working on a genetic algorithm and noticed some...

iPhone owners to Apple - We thought you loved us - September 7, 2007, 12:05 pm
iPhone owners to Apple - We thought you loved us Recently Apple slashed the price of its iPhone by 200 dollars. The New York Times reported that Apple fanatics felt betrayed by the way Apple hyped th...

Sin City and Arabian Nights and Days - August 30, 2007, 6:17 pm
Sin City and Arabian Nights and Days Frank Miller's Sin City and Naguib Mahfouz's Arabian Nights and Days I recently (finally) saw Sin City and afterwards realized that most of the "good...

Dumpster Diving - August 27, 2007, 6:09 pm
Dumpster Diving Another school year has come to a close (yes it closed nearly 3 months ago as of the posting of this, sigh). Yet before the caps have even been thrown into the air dumpsters and trash...

Deep Fried without the Guilt - August 21, 2007, 4:40 pm
Deep Fried without the Guilt This summer some friends of mine were discussing the innumeracy of the set of objects that can be fried and in a separate conversation the unique and stunning cuisine ava...

Faster than Light - August 21, 2007, 4:13 pm
Faster than Light A recent New York Times article describes the fascinating possibility that some non-things, such as shadows, can travel faster than the speed of light. NY Times Article At lea...